Get answers from product marketing leaders
Ben Rawnsley-Johnson
Censia VP of Marketing • July 27
A go-to-market strategy is at its heart, an exercise in alignment. A good B2B GTM plan maximizes your exposure to growth by drawing a through-line across your market and its needs, your company, and its offerings in the most efficient way possible. It is built around 3 pillars: * Market Opportunity: Expressed as TAM/SAM/SOM, outlining where the fertile areas of opportunity exist where you can make money (Segments, industry verticals, buying centers/Line of Business) * Positioning: Your company's products / Solutions, expressed through value propositions that align with your buyer/user's most important needs and problem areas. * Distribution & Campaign: Outlining Route-to-market, channels, and investment/returns, as well as the competitive, messaging, and positioning needed to build compelling content and creative. As for alignment internally, this comes down to good teamwork and hygiene, starting with: * Many fingerprints: bringing in your cross-functional contributors, from GTM, as well as Product early and often will ensure you're building a strategy that everyone not only understands but believes in and is committed to. * Define what "done" looks like Establishing a shared understanding of success should be your number one goal in executing a new strategy. Clearly defined, shared goals keep everyone focussed on the money. As a general rule, I want my marketers to feel a level of discomfort in owning a big goal, such as a business's growth rate, revenue goal, or other indicators of business health. Vanity metrics that feel comfortable to marketing such as pipeline, or satisfaction rates can be helpful for measuring certain activities, but the measure of whether a GTM strategy is successful MUST be expressed in business outcomes - usually $$$ * Do the extra work to ensure understanding: Folks often recommend offering training sessions or resources to help team members understand the GTM strategy and their role in its execution. This is a good idea, but too often people misunderstand and seek to justify the quality of a strategy through too much detail. A folder of decks, or lengthy documents will remain unread, and poorly understood. Instead, take the time to craft your articulation of the strategy the way you would work customer-facing content and messaging. Shipping a 5-minute loom, supported by a well-crafted document will be infinitely more impactful in driving a shared understanding than the world's best essay or PowerPoint.
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Adrienne Joselow
HubSpot Director of Product Marketing • December 7
My favorite example is Adidas video which shoes that yes, a runner can sprint through the desert in Nike shoes -- but a camera man with 50 additional pounds of equipment and wearing Adidas can keep up with him. It strikes the balance between saying, we respect your product and - ours is as good or better. Really clear value, clever approach, not so dimishing as to take away from the credibility or respect associated with Adidas' brand. Companies can absolutely straddle the line. It's about solving a new problem, solving a problem differently, and disrupting the status quo. The way to do this is focus on the benefit / new value you are delivering rather than simply tearing down a competitor. We offer extended value (strong) vs. they're not as good as you think they are (weak). There's a new way to think about this (stronger) vs. they're thinking about it wrong (weaker). The Bounty ad in the above blog also does a great job of this - no specific paper towel brand is the problem, any brand that isn't using Bounty technology is. Compelling stuff!
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What are your top questions to ensure you are hiring the right product marketing candidates and why?
John Hurley
Notion Head of Product Marketing • May 4
I like to frame questions in two parts. 1) Walk me through (WMT) an example of...XYZ. I do several of these that each map to the key responsibilities I'm looking for. I want to hear real-life stories – both for experience and ability to articulate. This was inspired by my product partner at Amplitude. Great article here: https://runthebusiness.substack.com/p/wmt-interview-questions 2) Follow the WMT question with some form of why, what did you learn, what would you have done differently? Somethings they answer this in #1. But I want to get into the first principles thinking, self-awareness, and ability to iterate on thinking on the fly. Finally, a fun one. I always ask for "What are your PMM brand crushes?" Who do they look to for inspiration? If they dont have any, they're not engaged enough in their work for the types of highly engaged teams Iike to build.
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Liz Gonzalez
Zendesk Director of Product Marketing - Global Enterprise (previously NYSE: ZEN) • August 24
PMM can influence several touchpoints across the enterprise sales motion. PMM’s biggest impact will likely vary widely depending on the business stage. Identifying and anticipating the needs of each person in the buying group and building appropriate content and messaging and aligning that to the sales process will be key. Adding value through the enterprise sales cycle can be done in a number of different ways including managing standardized Request for Proposal (RFP) responses, building a partnership with analyst relations team to help drive analyst outlook, and enabling the sales team with a differentiated story that speaks to large business impacts with solid proof points. I’d recommend analyzing your current sales motion today, what’s the biggest area of impact you find? Is there enough pipeline coverage? What are your conversion and win rates, can they be improved? What objections do your sales teams need to overcome? Is your message resonating in the market?
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Erica Conti
Asana Director of Product Marketing | Formerly Intuit, PepsiCo, Nielsen, Wakefern Food Corp. • August 9
A product launch I worked on in 2022 didn't go as expected due to rapidly changing market conditions. We initially developed aspirational messaging, but realized it wouldn't resonate in this new environment where "doing more with less" was very top of mind for our target audience. We quickly needed to pivot our messaging across channels without delaying the launch. This experience taught me two lessons that still influence my product launches today: 1. Stay acutely aware of market dynamics: * Continuously monitor market trends * Keep a pulse on competitive activities * Regularly reassess your target customers' mindsets 2. Maintain flexibility and agility: * Be prepared to pivot if necessary * Have contingency plans in place * Prioritize launch timing over perfection For me, this experience reinforced the importance of balancing long-term planning with short-term responsiveness. It's crucial to have a solid launch strategy, but equally important to remain nimble and ready to adjust when the market shifts unexpectedly.
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John Kinmonth
Atlassian Head of Product Marketing, Agile + DevOps Growth • October 6
Love this question. This will differ at every org, but for me the gold standard is win/loss ratio and booked revenue associated with a sales play, along with qualitative/sentiment data on whether it's resonating with customers (pitch recordings, feedback from sales, etc). These are not always easy to gather (and the first two might be outside of your official PMM remit), but they will really point your enablement efforts toward ROI. Other traditional measurements are more internal adoption- or checkbox-focused (passing a certification, attending a training, downloading or using an asset), but it can be harder to glean whether your enablement efforts are effective from those measures.
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Sherrie Nguyen (she/her)
Indeed Director of Product Marketing • July 29
Great question! You actually squeezed 3 topics in here, which are all inter-related and important to buyer journey maps. In my experience, I start with segmenting my audience (total addressable market by country, company, vertical/industry, etc), identifying personas within my target audience (buyer/user), mapping the journeys for each persona, and then testing which content formats/channels work best. This means if I'm selling to Enterprises vs. mid-sized companies, IT vs. Finance buyers, I should understand the different journeys, budgets, and decision making processes and plan my content accordingly. Be choosy about where to focus! I would test and measure content starting from the top of the funnel for awareness (paid ads, SEO, partnerships, brand campaigns, podcast, etc.) - is your brand a consideration for your category? Move to the middle to drive consideration (web, case studies, white papers, demos, etc.) - is there preference for your brand vs. competitors or alternative offerings? And finally, bottom of the funnel to close the purchase (talk to sales, referrals, trial, etc.) - are you the right choice to meet their needs? Content at each of these stages has a different intent and measurement for success. The more specifically your content addresses a specific buyer's problem with the right level of information, the more likely you are to convert them to the next stage! From a research perspective, I've found a few research frameworks to be helpful for journey maps: jobs to be done, diary/desk studies, and 1:1 interviews. That's why getting the right person from the beginning is important, and meet with as many as you can until trends become apparent. Best of luck!
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Eric Chang
1Password Director, Product Marketing • January 21
I'd recommend making sure to spend enough time on the planning and information gathering phase that is necessary prior to creating messaging. The most common issue I've seen with messaging is PMMs jumping straight into creating a framework before they truly take the time to understand their target audience's pain points, and how the product solves those pain points. As a result, the messaging turns into that individual's view of why they think the product is great. In an ideal world you would be able to find lots of customer research/insights, create a persona, a clear set of problems, establish positioning, understand the product, and then dive into messaging. The reality is you often don't have the time/resources to do all this. In these situations, I recommend you create a simple brief that lays out very clearly your audience pain points, positioning, and key product info. If you have those 3 items the messaging exercise is much more straight forward and they serve as a good reminder of the foundation you're using to build your messaging. Next, make sure to get feedback (ideally from your target audience, but teammates are great as well). Repetitions and practice are important, but getting feedback will help you better understand if messaging is resonating before you push it live. The feedback will help you course correct and deliver more effective in-market messaging, plus it will help you identify how you can improve. From a structured learning perspective, a public speaking or writing class could also be helpful. Effective public speaking requires you to understand an idea and communicate it clearly, which are both helpful and complementary to improving messaging skills. I myself haven't taken a writing class before, but I have known many PMMs (especially those in more content heavy roles) who have and would recommend it.
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Kristen Kanka
Morningstar Head of Marketing, Enterprise Solutions | Formerly CaptureX, Medline Industries • January 27
Storytelling is the biggest trait is look for. I want all of my product marketers to be able to tell stories that anyone can follow that inspire action. Everyone I interview is asked to provide a writing sample so I can see if they’ve got “it.” The next trait is problem solving: In every interview I ask the same question: Tell me about a go-to-market that failed. I don’t care so much about the “why” of the failure; I want to know how you determined it was off track, and what you did about it to get back on track. And third is collaboration. How does someone build relationships? How can they earn a seat at the table with a diverse group of stakeholders? If they aren’t able to collaborate, it isn’t a role for them. You have to want to be the glue that holds a team together.
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Bonnie Chiurazzi
Glassdoor Director of Market Insights • September 27
1. Persona frameworks are unique to the organizations and teams who use them. But there are a few core elements that will add some structural integrity to your personas. 1. Context and Market - How do you define the market that this persona is pulled from? Do you need to be able to size the perona’s incidence in the marketplace? 2. Name - Choose a name that is memorable and conveys whatever it is that makes this persona unique and/or valuable. Some folks like to give their persona a name like “Steve” or maybe “Steller Steve.” This is more of a stylistic thing, but I prefer more descriptive names to help stakeholders remember the most important traits of the segment. Also, make sure you pick a name you’re comfortable saying over and over in meetings! 3. Value - Identify how you will assign value to each persona. Is it an attitude they have? A behavior they exhibit? An action they take? 4. Who - Who are they (demographics, job title, hobbies, home life, etc.)? 5. What - What are they trying to accomplish in your marketplace and why? 6. Where - Where do they currently go to meet their needs? How does your brand show up compared to competitors? 7. When - What triggers them to action within your marketplace? 8. Why - Why do they have these specific needs in the marketplace? What is it that makes them unique? Presumably, this a big part of the reason you decided to create the persona, so dedicate extra time to this. 9. Pain points - What isn’t working for them? What could be better? 10. Their journey - Put it all together. What triggers them to action? What’s their desired outcome? What actually happens? 2. Sophia’s Pro Tip: Do the work to align on semantics early on. Align on a definition of a “persona” and what will be included in the profile. Make sure to revisit how your organization has used personas in the past and leverage existing frameworks and information. If you deviate from the existing frameworks or if you’re adding a new persona while others are still being leverage, make sure you’re ready to speak to the value your new methodology will add. 3. Bonnie’s pro tip: Map out your persona profile before you conduct your research. Then map your questionnaire or discussion to the profile to ensure you’re asking all the right questions to completely fill out the profile. 4. Patti’s pro tip: Check your personas for unconscious bias and make sure to include a diverse set of voice in the research that leads up to persona development.
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